


Sleeper Awake

by liketogetlost



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 05:35:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/618672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketogetlost/pseuds/liketogetlost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The next time she dreams this world she meets the Detective. He finds her, knocking on her door and looking her up and down. She wears only her dressing gown, feeling no modesty, and he wears leather and a frown. There are stories in the wrinkles around his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleeper Awake

_Use your hands  
I know you love  
To get  
Them dirty_  
[Sleeper Awake](http://www.mediafire.com/?lhy3x35u3pzmijr) \- Sarah Blasko

Sometimes Rose dreams in monochrome. 

There are nights, or days or afternoons because she gets so tired lately and time seems to mean nothing anymore, that she goes to sleep in her bed. Then she'll awake and the world will be colored in shades of black and white. In this world she lives above a bar and her wardrobe is full of tight, bombshell dresses that hug her curves like a skilled lover. 

Downstairs there's always music playing. Sometimes a fight breaks out and the barkeep has to throw out a couple of hooligans. Rose avoids the place most times, she's not much of a drinker.

But she likes to go out and explore this black and white world. She'll walk the streets, unafraid, her heels clicking against the ground as she walks her imagined town. 

At times she feels as if everyone around her is watching her every move. As if everything she does is important, and they look at her like they're waiting for her to do something. Like every swerve of her hips turns the Earth itself. She doesn't mind this feeling because she knows this is all a dream. 

Even at night, when the streets are darker than coal and smoke floats from the ground, Rose feels no fear. 

When shots ring out and echo around her, Rose runs to where a man has been gunned down in a deserted alleyway. She tries to help him, calls out for anyone around here, but it seems like at this time the whole world is choosing to ignore her.

The man just looks up at her and smiles, reaches up and touches her face with a kind hand. She presses it closer, and she doesn't know why. Then Rose realizes it's Jack. Jack, who's blood is blacker than night and creating shapes around him on the ground. Rose begins to cry, even though she knows this isn't real, and kisses his forehead. 

There's a gasp, soft and barely heard, and then he's gone. She's left kissing air.

The next time she dreams this world she meets the Detective. 

He finds her, knocking on her door and looking her up and down. She wears only her dressing gown, feeling no modesty, and he wears leather and a frown. There are stories in the wrinkles around his eyes.

He asks her about the Captain. Asks her what she saw, what she heard. She offers him tea from her tiny stove that sits not even five feet from her bed. Her flat is small. Downstairs people yell at each other.

He refuses. He doesn't write anything she says down, says he has a good memory. The best, even. She grins at him and finds he has to fight not to grin back, she can see it in his eyes. He says he needs her help, because no one else in town wants to speak a word about that night. Seems everyone is hiding something. 

Sometimes she wakes up and it all feels so real she can only see the real world in gray. 

She watches her mother kiss Pete and it seems like a scene from an old movie.

The Detective smokes. She doesn't particularly like it, but she doesn't say anything. He doesn't say anything when she takes his hand without thinking as they walk along the street together. There's a tenseness to him, she can feel it whenever he's near. It's like he's carrying a invisible weight on his shoulders. But he doesn't pull away.

Sometimes he squeezes her hand hard.

They look for the missing Captain together. They ask neighbors and store owners and club goers and Rose still feels them all looking at her. Almost like she's the one being questioned by them all. They watch her walk away with the Detective and Rose shivers sometimes. Sometimes he lets her wear his jacket.

It smells like smoke and oil.

He doesn't have a car. They walk everywhere. The town is odd, like it's small and yet never ending. Just when Rose thinks they've reached the end, there's another road to walk down. Her feet don't hurt, though, with all this walking.

Rose knows it's not real. But it feels real.

More often Rose goes back to his office with him and eats chips while sitting on his desk. Her legs dangle off the side, shoes off and left on the floor. Her dress rides up and her garters show. The Detective abuses a typewriter while Rose studies the pictures on his walls. Places he's been, places that don't exist in her dark world but yet are still there, right behind his form. For some reason he looks different in all of them.

Rose forgets who the Captain is.

She doesn't wake up.

She begins to get headaches.

When the Detective comes knocking she ignores him, rolling around in her sheets and trying to sleep. She can't, for some reason. 

The next time he sees her he comments on the dark circles around her eyes. 

They question a secretary by the name of Noble. She looks like she'd be a redhead, if she could see colors. Rose doesn't exactly remember what red looks like, anyhow.

Noble has a bad memory, as well. She tells them she can't remember the last time she saw the Captain. She says she's a good typist though, which is why her boss keeps her around. 

There's a doctor called Jones who shakes her hand and looks oddly at the Detective. Says he seems familiar, but not. That doesn't make any sense to Rose. 

Although sometimes the Detective doesn't look like himself.

Sometimes she takes his hand and it's different, a lighter touch. Sometimes she sees stripes when she looks at him instead of shiny leather. Once she finds a pair of spectacles on his desk and puts them on, fooling around and posing like Marilyn Monroe. He tells her to take them off, and that Monroe was killed. He looks scared when he says it so she pulls them off quick.

Rose says she thought Monroe committed suicide. The Detective just shrugs as if it doesn't matter.

For some reason Rose feels like it really does.

They run out of leads. She doesn't see him for weeks. She begins to spend time in the bar downstairs. Rum burns her throat. Her feet begin to hurt walking in heels. Rose finds herself drawn to the drummer of the band. He's darker than most, even in this dark world. He sits in the back and she can feel him watching her. Rose licks her lips, tasting lipstick and alcohol. The cigarette smoke that permeates the place stings her lungs.

When she goes outside for fresh air, he's there. 

He asks her if she likes his music. She cocks an eyebrow and says she's heard better.

She just can't recall any right now.

Rose hasn't slept in too long. When the Drummer looks at her she feels like she could fall over into dreams.

She goes to visit the Detective to see if he's made any progress. No one has seen the Captain since he disappeared. He can't find the culprits who shot him, and the Detective tells her he has someplace to be.

When she asks him why he's leaving he won't say. 

He picks this moment to tell her about his time in the war. He tells her about all the friends he lost, all the family. She wonders if that's why he never looks like the same man. Because he's hiding from himself all the time.

Rose asks him not to go. 

He asks her to come along.

For some odd reason, Rose feels compelled to stay. Like she's stepped into a piece of gum in the street, and she's stuck. She feels like she can't move from this world without destroying it. Rose cries, wet tears that feel like sunburn streaking her face, and the Detective brushes them away with his thumb. 

He smells like so much smoke and dust, and when Rose closes her eyes she can almost see him in color. He kisses her, and kisses her, over and over again. He presses her against his desk, holding her by the dip of her back and lets his lips make acquaintance with her neck, her chest. He sits at his chair and pushes her dress up her thighs, presses his nose beneath her knee and slides her heels off, letting them drop to the floor. She grips the edge of his desk and breathes out slowly, watching him watching her as he sucks a mark onto the side of her ankle through her stockings.

He keeps changing in front of her. She loves every man she sees.

He pulls her into his lap and they keep kissing. Rose whispers something in his ear, something that suddenly occurs to her. Five words that make him tense and push her off gently. Rose is shaking and it's not from his touch. The Detective tells him he knows what happened to the Captain. Rose knows, too, in that moment.

The Detective has to leave. She wants to kiss him goodbye but she knows she can't touch him. If she does it all ends. Somewhere a sun burns out. 

There are so many more worlds. 

Everyone watches her as she leaves his office. Like they're waiting. 

Rose goes home and strips off her clothes to the beat of the Drummer below. The saxophone sounds like a howl that hurts her head. She slides into bed naked and closes her eyes.

She dreams again.

When she wakes, the colors burn her eyes.

When she wakes, she's already running.


End file.
